You’re investing in travel influencers. The content looks beautiful. The social metrics look good. So why isn’t it driving travel?
Travel influencer marketing is not broken. But the way many destinations execute it is.
Too often, campaigns prioritize pretty content over compelling storytelling, exposure over action, and one-off partnerships over sustained influence. The result? Short bursts of good social metrics and weak travel outcomes.
If your influencer partnerships are not translating into real visitors, here are three reasons why.
You’re Not Telling A Story
I.e. YOUR POSTS ARE BORING. Best said by Cameron Gidari, VP of Social Media and Innovation at MLB: “People don’t have short attention spans, they have short consideration spans.” People can and will watch long content all the way to the end if it interests them, but if you don’t hook them in the first few seconds, they will keep on scrolling. If you don’t give them a reason to keep watching, they will scroll on.
There are millions of pieces of content being uploaded each day. If you want to drive travel, you have no choice but to partner with influencers who stand out. Take the extra time to truly find influencers who can tell a good story and hold their audience’s attention. Vetting takes time. In our end-of-the-year influencer marketing survey, 56% of destination marketers said “Finding and Vetting Influencers” was a top challenge, but the influencers you choose matter. Influencers are the foundation of the campaign; there’s no way to make up for poor influencer selection later.
Curious what good storytelling looks like? Here are a few examples of phenomenal content that held viewers’ interest.
There’s Not A Consistent Path From Content To Action
You can select the best influencers in the world, and they can craft incredible content, but if all viewers can do is watch the piece of content, you’re missing a huge opportunity. The average social media session is 8 minutes long. People open up the apps when they have a few minutes here and there throughout the day. If a travel video catches their eye, they are likely to do one of 3 things:
Save it: When is the last time you ever went back through your saved posts? It’s a graveyard, and even Instagram will tell you it’s a low intent action.
Share it: This is higher intent, because at least they have shared your travel content with someone else, and that person may comment and remind them of it again later.
Repost it: Great because it gets you more views. In the event someone who follows them likes it, they will get a notification that brings them back to the post.
Social media has a few action-oriented options built in, but none of those actually move a viewer closer to your destination. Your content needs to make it clear what the next action is you want the viewer to take, and make it easy for them to do that without leaving the feed. You can most easily do that through DM Automation:
Comment “X” to receive a “Y”.
Now you can send them some more information, grab their email address, or help them plan their trip.
See how it works by scanning this QR code:
You’re Expecting One Partnership To Do All The Work
Most people are not going to be ready to travel the first time they are exposed to influencer content of your destination. In the beauty industry, a person needs to hear about a product 3-4 times from an influencer before purchasing. That is for a $20-$50 product. A trip is exponentially more expensive; you are going to need a lot of touch points. Most DMOs don’t have the budget to do all of those touch points through influencers. That’s why connecting content to action is so important.
If you connect content to action through a platform like Steller, you can increase the touchpoints for 90-365 days and still make sure the bulk of your touchpoints are high–quality influencer storytelling. Why does that matter? Because people trust people. They want to see themselves in your destination and hear about it from real travelers. Combine that with planning tools, automated marketing, and booking opportunities, and you have a measurable path from social content to booking.
For DMOs Who Need Their Influencer Partnerships to Drive Travel
If you’re investing in influencers but not seeing a return (or you’re not sure if you’re seeing a return), if your content is beautiful but you’re not sure if the metrics actually lead to travel, it’s time to approach influencer marketing differently.
We work with DMOs who need their influencer partnerships to do more than get impressions and engagement. We work with you to select influencers with the right mix of storytelling and engagement to stop the scroll and connect the content to action through Steller Connect. This creates a direct, measurable path from influencer content to traveling to your destination.
